‘Yes, they’re four hours and thirty minutes ahead of us,’ said the other. ‘And a thousand years behind.’

Outside on the runway, the engines of the Hercules air transport started up. King suddenly had to raise his voice.

‘I would very much like all those men out there to come back,’ he said. ‘I don’t want them crippled. I don’t want them killed. I don’t want to see them repatriated – in the hideous modern parlance.’ His broken face twisted with disgust, as if the word physically sickened him. ‘I don’t want those good brave men brought back to face the pity of the Darrens and the Sharons who stand outside Tesco.’ He smiled without mirth. ‘“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye who cheer when soldier lads march by—”’

‘“Sneak home and pray you’ll never know,”’ Mallory said, ‘“the hell where youth and laughter go.”’

King chuckled. ‘Very good, detective. Where did you go?’

‘Where did I go?’

‘Your school.’

Mallory smiled. ‘I didn’t go anywhere. I went to a state school in Banff. In the Highlands. Get to Aberdeen and keep going. But we liked our First World War poets.’

‘Siegfried Sassoon, of course,’ King said. ‘Lived to a ripe old age. Died in 1967. But his great friend Wilfred Owen was killed just one week before the Armistice. The fate of our two greatest war poets perfectly illustrates the random nature of death. I want all those men out there to come home. That will not happen. We arrive in Afghanistan at night so they can’t kill us immediately. But they always get around to it eventually. The really unlucky ones will be wounded and live. Single amputees, double amputees, triple amputees and – full house – both arms and both legs gone. Or no balls, no cock, no face. Phallic reconstruction is a growth industry, I’m told. And no cheering crowds for those lads. There will be roadside bombs. There will be friendly fire from our American chums and our Afghan allies. There will be the local policeman who decides that his god wants him to blow up as many of my men as possible. My men will be killed by IEDs. They will step on bombs left behind by the Russians as well as the Taliban. Some of those men out there will come home in wheelchairs, and some will come home in a coffin. Death is the price we pay for life, gentlemen, and sometimes the bill arrives early. And it will not be fair. It will not be rational. You both know that as policemen. Death doesn’t play the game, does it?’

He stood up. Outside, the soldiers were preparing to board the plane.